A short history of Forest

A Short History of Everything Else, the Channel 4 comedy panel game presented by Griff Rhys Jones, featured an item about smoking on Friday.

After a short clip the conversation went like this:

Griff Rhys Jones: The anti-smoking lobby is called ASH. What does that stand for?
Panellist: Asthma Starts Here?
Griff Rhys Jones: No, Action on Smoking and Health, but ... there's another lobby, Forest, which gets together to try and promote smoking. Let's see what happens when they get together.

Cut to film of a Forest meeting (above).

Voiceover: Forest. Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco, meeting to counter No Smoking Day. Tobacco is consumed with such fervour that special air conditioning units were brought in to keep the smoke at bay. Smokers' rights, they say, are civil rights.

Griff Rhys Jones: That was indeed a Forest meeting. Excellent turnout, poor visibility.

You can view the full item here. It starts around 15:30.

The report must have been from the early Nineties because I recognised one of my predecessors, the late Chris Tame (bright red tie), who was director from 1990-1995.

I also spotted some other familiar faces including Lord Harris (smoking his pipe) and Forest researcher Judith Hatton. In 1998 they co-authored a book, Murder A Cigarette: The Smoking Debate, that featured much of Judith's research.

Chairing the meeting, if I'm not mistaken, was libertarian activist Marc-Henri Glendenning who later wrote an obituary of Chris Tame for the Guardian. And I'm sure that one of several youthful looking people present went on to became a senior advisor to the Conservative party. (I won't embarrass him by mentioning his name!)

Since we're talking historically it gives me an opportunity to mention that a few months ago a lady called Penny Bunn joined the Friends of Forest Facebook group. She subsequently wrote to me to say that:

Many, many years ago, during the 1980s in fact, I temped for Forest for a few days. I asked the agency if I'd be allowed to smoke in the office and they came back to me with a rather tongue-in-cheek query from your office:

"Ask her if she knows who we actually ARE?"

I did, of course, but I'd felt I had to check that I was OK to smoke. I don't remember the names of the chaps I worked with, unfortunately. I mean, it really was donkeys years ago! But, I do remember sitting in the little office and tapping away with my ashtray next to me, and I remember that the couple of guys who worked there were very pleasant to work with.

As I recall, the office was mainly brown (that's what my memory tells me, anyway), very small and quite tatty, which is actually exactly what I like in an office! And my workstation was facing the wall in what I assume at the time was the main office/reception area.

I think I probably temped there for only about three days. I remember, even then, thinking it was a blessed relief I could smoke in the office and it therefore ranked as one of my BEST EVER assignments on that basis alone, although whether or not my bosses at the time would agree with me on that, I wouldn't like to say!

See Taming the anti-smokers, an interview with Chris Tame, circa 1994. At the time Forest was based at 2 Grosvenor Gardens, London SW1, close to Victoria Station, but I'm not sure if that is the office Penny is referring to.

It could have been because I understand it was fairly grotty. In 1998 my immediate predecessor Marjorie Nicholson moved the Forest office to 13 Palace Street, also in Victoria but a stone's throw from Buckingham Palace and a rather more salubrious location.

The office had been totally refurbished. It was on the corner of the building so it felt bright and modern, even though the building itself was 100 years old.

Marjorie installed high tech air filtration units so people could smoke and work at their desks. As long as the units were switched on I don't remember it ever being a problem, although the less said about the coffee table with the enormous built-in ashtray the better.

(If we had visitors sandwiches would be brought in from the cafe next door. They would be laid out on the table which meant that the smokers would have to lean across the sandwiches to flick their ash into the ashtray. Sometimes the ash would fall on the food. No-one batted an eyelid.)

We moved out of Palace Street in February 2005 (the rent was £50,000 a year) and have used a serviced office in Cambridge (while hotdesking in London) ever since.

H/T Karl Gilmour for alerting me via Facebook to the mention of Forest on A Short History.

Comments

[timbone]

Something stood out to me which confirmed my thoughts about the uphill struggle. I know that the panel use comedic annecdote in their responses. I genuinly believe however that this was not the case when asked by GRJ what year smoking was banned in places of work. Answers ranged from 2001 to 2005. Not one of them knew that it was 2007. I really do not think they knew what ASH stands for either. Never smokers by and large are not interested, they are not really bothered.